


Count The Flaws

by NoStraightLine



Series: Trying to Find The In-Between [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: A Scandal In Belgravia NoStraightLine-style, BAMF!John, Irene Adler isn't the distraction John had in mind, John's still not lucky, M/M, Porn Porn, Sherlock has to win, Sherlock's coping the only way he knows how, bsdm-ish porn, riding crop porn, what the hell all the porns, you can't delete emotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-26
Updated: 2013-04-26
Packaged: 2017-12-09 13:38:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/774827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoStraightLine/pseuds/NoStraightLine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John asked whatever god was listening for a distraction from Moriarty. Irene Adler is not what he had in mind.</p><p>(This is part four of an ongoing series. While it's not absolutely necessary, this segment will make more sense if you read the first three installments...)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Count The Flaws

“Mr. Archer, at the count of three, shoot Dr. Watson.”

_“What?”_

To Sherlock’s ear, trained in the violin and every nuance of said Dr. Watson’s voice, John sounds as astonished as a man should when, ten minutes earlier he was brawling with his flatmate in the street, and now is about to die.

For _her_. For the woman wearing his coat like a sixth former wears her boyfriend’s jumper.

Unacceptable.

“I don’t know the code,” Sherlock says to the American in charge. He lies frequently, but not this time, as should be patently obvious.

“One.”

“I _don’t_ … _know_ …the code.” With a minimal language barrier, surely repeating himself and articulating will ensure comprehension, even with this idiot.

“Two.”

“She didn’t tell me _I don’t know it_!” he shouts, using volume to cover what just might be panic.

The American is unimpressed. “I’m prepared to believe you any second now.”

Meaning when John’s pedestrian-but-necessary brain is spattered over Irene Adler’s cream rug. He looks at her, because he cannot look at John, on his knees, a gun to his nape.

The woman glances down.   

???????

The shift of her eyes is clearly significant but he has no idea why. He’s going to lose John watching him. Lose _John_ , who did not survive a bullet through the shoulder in Afghanistan to die here, in this way, now. Rather than in Sherlock’s keeping — as it should be —  John’s life is in this woman’s hands

( _handsarmsshoulderstorsolook_ )

Oh.

It’s all he can do not to roll his eyes, but the Americans do have guns. For the moment. Do their parents arm them at birth?

“Three.”

“No!”

He deduces her measurements, but something tells him that even naked Irene Adler is cloaked in layers of duplicity. After another significant glance, there’s a nicely choreographed bit of business whilst opening the safe. Irene demonstrates her self-defence skills, and while she’s pistol-whipping the last American, Sherlock palms her mobile. John trots off to check on the fallen girl, and the woman demands he return her phone.

He refuses, of course. He’s won it, perhaps not fair and square, but all’s fair, as the saying goes. This isn’t love, but it’s definitely war. Well, he says war, more of a skirmish — which he won — laced with an arousing physical element, a threat, and John’s life saved. Fire sings in his blood, heralding spectacular post-case sex.  

But Irene Adler plays dirty.

First, she rams a needle into his upper arm, managing to hit a nerve cluster in addition to injecting something into him.

Then her palm lashes against his face.

 _That’s_ familiar, being hit with malice as a narcotic bubbles merrily in his bloodstream. The circumstances are not, a woman with hair done up like an Edwardian lady and the shock and awe tactics of a whore. It’s disconcerting, and the mental soup of confusion and drug-and-pain-induced flashback drops him to his knees.

“Give it to me.”

“No.”

She stays in his blurring field of vision, voicing commands from just out of his reach. Smart.  “Give it to me!”

Under the drug’s influence his muscles involuntarily relax but _she values the thing in his hand therefore he will keep it where is John_?  
He forces his body to obey orders, and tightens his grip. “No.”

“Oh, for goodness’s sake.” A whirl of the coat _his coat is that what it looks like when he moves oh that’s lovely_ then, “I — ”

Leather-wrapped fiberglass whistles through the air. Pain flares white-hot and fierce along his shoulder. At least it’s the one not throbbing from the impact of a needle full of what his body is assuring him is a very high-quality sedative.

“— said — ”

Oxygen molecules scream as they’re displaced at a rather high rate of speed, the crop’s motion powered by a woman who radiates fear and anxiety and arousal and an unholy glee. The impact triggers an echo of the shrieking air in his nerves.

He will not lose to this woman. Too much is at stake.  

The final blow lands.

“ — _drop it_.”

His fingers spasm open, and Sherlock drops the phone. But when the drugged stupor reaches up for him with fingers wrapped in thick gauze, he dreams not of Irene, but of John —    
  
 — John in the vest Moriarty detonates it John ceases to exist —  
  
— the rough-and-tumble with John outside the townhouse then John in the door with his gentle hands and his watching eyes —    
  
— John has a gun to the nape of his neck Irene doesn’t bat an eyelash Mr. Archer pulls the trigger —  
  
— John holds the crop, but he’s not speaking at all.  
  
  
When he regains consciousness in his own bed, his coat is hanging from the back of his door. For the first time in their singular relationship, he doesn’t feel like having sex with John after a case.  
  
She won. One doesn’t discuss losses, let alone celebrate them. John understands, of course, except he doesn’t.  
   
The next time he sees Lestrade, half the Yard clusters round while Lestrade plays back the video on his mobile of Sherlock as a great, drooling, incoherent mess. Laughter breaks out when Sherlock bangs his head on the cab’s doorframe while John struggles to get Sherlock’s long, uncooperative limbs into the vehicle. Without a word Sherlock takes the phone, deletes the video, and hands it back.

The room goes quiet. “Prat,” someone mutters, and it’s not Anderson or Donovan, or the egg-shaped crime scene tech.

“They were just taking the piss,” John says in the cab on the way home.

Sherlock says nothing.

“He wouldn’t do it if he didn’t like you,” John continues. “It’s just…something blokes do.”

Sherlock looks at him. John’s efforts to explain the nuances of human behavior are tedious at best and infuriating at worst. This is a worst. He lost, someone recorded the aftermath, and he’s the subject of ridicule.

“If he didn’t like you he’d have posted it to YouTube by now.”

Sherlock goes back to staring out the window.  
  
+  
  
Months later her phone appears in the post. The bloody post. All that fuss and the bloody woman entrusts the bloody thing to the bloody Royal Mail.

The home screen tells him I AM _ _ _ _ LOCKED. Helpful, that. So _thoughtful_. So _maddening_. He will unlock this phone, and he will win this round. But fiddling around with different combinations only ticks away chance after chance.  
  
John says he should let it go, could let it go, if he tried, but his strategy is all wrong. One does not back down from psychopaths, sociopaths, bullies, arrogant school mates, mothers, brothers who are the British government, or dominatrices. One does not ever back down. One wins by proving one is clever, more clever than the opponent. In winning lies freedom from manipulation, from obligation, from apology.  
  
Then the woman appears in his flat, pleading for protection, offering a puzzle to solve.

He solves it.

In…thanks?…acknowledgement?…perversity?…she attempts to seduce him. He knows this because her physiological responses mirror John’s. Elevated pulse, dilated pupils, shallow breathing…all proper signals of sexual interest, but it’s not quite right. Not like John.  
As she stares into his eyes in front of the fire, he identifies the difference. He’s not responding to her. He does to John. His response fuels John’s and John’s fuels his.

_John._

His name has become something more than a sound useful for getting his attention. It means something more than _come here I need you hold this open that lick there yes_.

The sex has been spectacular since that night at the club. John _all in_ is even more useful and fascinating and _watching_ than before. It’s an intense feedback loop of sex, competition, and victory. As this thing smoulders between them he knows he will never get enough of John Watson, because he will never get to the end of John Watson.  
  
+  
  
But then…then he’s driven to a plane full of corpses, where Mycroft explains how he’s been tricked, used, and manipulated by Moriarty, through the woman. He’s ruined one of Mycroft’s schemes, set back years of carefully gathered intelligence, and Irene Adler, smugly back in possession of her locked mobile, is now in a position to put rather a dent in the wealth of the British nation.  
  
Turns out, it’s war. Unless he can unlock her mobile, he will lose.  
  
I AM _ _ _ _ LOCKED.  
  
What would a woman who used her measurements to lock up her BlackBerry use to lock —  (l _ockaroomlockadoorlockboxlockandkeywhatisthekeytoherlock)_ —  
  
Oh. _Oh._  
  
It cannot be that simple, that ridiculous, that _sentimental_. First her measurements, then this? Not even John would wallow in sentiment to that extent.  
  
He plucks the mobile from her hand, enters the code. The lock screen dissolves. He hands the defenceless mobile to Mycroft, and gathers his coat.  
  
 _You are SHERLOCKED. I win._  
  
“Sorry about dinner,” he says without affect as he leaves.  
  
John would like that. He’s always telling him off for forgetting the niceties. Sherlock doesn’t mean it any more than he meant it when he asked Molly to forgive him. He tested various forms of affection until he found three most effective at assuaging John: stroking of hair or skin; kisses prior to separating and upon reuniting; Sherlock being kind to others. Affection by proxy. He doesn’t see the reward, but it works.  
  
+  
  
In the car back to Baker Street, he ponders the puzzle. Moriarty was behind it all, months and months of waiting, watching, testing different strategies and baits. Did he choose the woman, with her particular proclivities, on purpose, to test him for weaknesses? Would he have succumbed?

It’s an interesting problem.

He understands _her_ motivations. They make perfect sense, the need for total control, for total dominance. Her clients’ motivations defy rational explanation. Craving sensation makes sense to him; he is, after all, a drug addict. It’s the loss of control that doesn’t. People are generally mystifyingly stupid, but why would someone willingly surrender? What does she do for them they cannot do for themselves?

Why this woman?

It’s distracting.

It’s the cabbie’s pill all over again, and Moriarty, and John.  

He turns it over, tries to categorize it, take it apart and identify the components, and the sheer imprecision of the problem fogs his brain. Too many variables. He needs to be able to think again. He has to know. He needs clarity.

The next day, he texts John.  
  
Buy rope. SH  
  
What for?  
  
At least four meters. SH  
  
I'm at work.  
  
Tonight will do. SH  
  
Shops closed when I get off work.  
  
Scarves acceptable substitute. SH  
  
No easier to come by.  
  
Four. SH  
  
No.  
  
Any color. SH  
  
 0.o  
  
What is that? SH  
  
It’s an emoticon. Like :) or ;) or :P. 0.o = I’m raising one eyebrow to indicate “Really, Sherlock? Get scarves when I get off work? Are you fucking kidding me?” Your primary form of communication is texting. How do you not know this?  
  
Because it’s stupid and pointless, as is John’s attempt to convert his expressive face into symbols. He spends a few minutes attempting to construct an emoticon that resembles Edvard Munch’s _The Scream_ before deciding he has better things to do with his time.  
  
Silk. SH  
  
For God’s sake, why?  
  
I dislike polyester. SH  
  
He’s very tactile. John isn’t, or years of wearing uniforms dulled his skin. Sherlock’s is exquisitely sensitive, as John well knows.  
  
That isn’t the issue, Sherlock.  
  
Sherlock fails to see why there’s an issue at all. Perhaps money is the issue.  
  
You have my bank card. SH  
  
I’m ignoring you.  
  
John is patently not ignoring him. John is incapable of ignoring him. After a bit of research, Sherlock adds to the shopping list.  
  
Chemist: disinfectant, antibiotic cream, aloe. SH  
  
Christ. What have you done?  
  
Answer me, Sherlock.  
  
Sherlock. Answer your mobile.  
  
Bloody answer me somehow or I'm going to send Lestrade round.  
  
Delicate haemoglobin experiment. Stop bothering me. SH  
  
He thinks on it a bit longer. There's no need to be precious about all of this, so he sends one final text.  
  
Rope not scarves. SH

+

  
When John comes home, supplies in hand, he mutters darkly about running errands and his job mattering as much as Sherlock’s what with the need to pay the rent and keep himself in food. He haphazardly dumps the contents of two bags on the kitchen table. Sherlock sweeps everything up and tosses bottles and rope on his bed, next to his riding crop. When he returns to the sitting room, John’s shrugged out of his coat. John reaches for Sherlock’s arms and shoves the sleeves up to reveal his wrists.

“Christ, what’s that smell? Is it _in_ the fridge? What have you done with the shopping?” he demands, turning Sherlock’s hands palm up, then palm down.

“I’m not injured.”

John’s gaze lifts to his. “Thirty-eight texts today but you can’t be bothered to tell me you don’t need the shopping anymore.”

“I don’t need it now,” Sherlock says with exaggerated patience. He turns for his bedroom. “I will in a couple of hours. You’ve likely got a firm hand.”

John follows him. “What are you going to do this time?”

“A better question, John,” Sherlock says as he disinfects his crop, “is what are you going to do this time?”

John looks at the crop, the aloe gel, the rope, the antibiotic cream, then at Sherlock. His brain is normal but bright, so it doesn’t take him long to connect the dots. “How many blackmailing dominatrices do you expect to encounter, Sherlock?”

“Given the combination of sex, violence, and people’s obsession with the salacious, I’m rather surprised I haven’t encountered one before.”

“Point,” John says. He leans against the bedroom door frame, the pose too casual to be casual. “Did you want her to use that riding crop on you?”

John is jealous. It’s a petty emotion, unsuited to John’s face. Sherlock doesn’t want her. So artificial, so contrived, so theatrical. So needy. How could one think in her presence?   

“You are bisexual, John. I am not.” He’s not sure what term accurately describes his sexuality, but whatever it is does not include Irene Adler. “Furthermore, she did use that riding crop on me.”

He’s got John’s full attention now, and he is so restless, bored, and somehow dulled with it all. None of the distractions are working, and maybe what happened means he’s losing his edge _losinglosinglosing_ —

“You know what I mean.”

“No. I did not want her to practice her trade on me. I don’t want an elaborate scenario where I admit I’ve been wicked and beg to be punished,” he says impatiently. John can separate Sherlock’s infuriating habits from this. He won’t be beaten because he leaves heads in the fridge or humiliates Molly or can’t be bothered to clean up after himself.

“You just want me to whip you.”

Will this burn off the acidic fear, the pounding dread? Will it purify his mind of the memory of a gun to John’s nape while the American counts in a flat, nasal accent? Does it sharpen, hone, clarify? “Yes.”

“As an experiment.”

“Yes.”

“I’m not sure someone with your history should do this, Sherlock.”

“Don't be nervous. After the club I'm sure you'll be fine.”

John’s face goes even more still. “So no games. No fantasies. Just pain. Who decides when it ends?”

“You do.” It’s a penance, of sorts. John would never say it, but he must pay for who he is.

John’s face is a study in intensity. Eyes heavy-lidded, lips thin, a flush blooming on his cheeks. One eyebrow, one single eyebrow, flicks up. “Choose a safeword.”

Sherlock scoffs.

“Choose a safeword or this doesn’t happen.”

“I can take whatever you are able to give me, John.”

“Sherlock, are you familiar with the phrase _safe, sane, and consensual_? Of course not,” John says, answering his own question. “I’m talking to you. Two of those words aren’t in your vocabulary, and the third’s optional. Choose a safeword.” John nods at the crop. “Consider it your first order.”

John’s scruples are so boring, but the possibility of clarity means he’s prepared to acquiesce. “My safeword is safeword,” he allows.

John nods. There’s something to the precision with which he moves his head. He’s not agreeing. He’s recording a piece of data. “Bring me the aloe gel I bought,” he says, then turns and walks into the kitchen.

The gel is within reach on Sherlock’s bed, so John demanding it must be a component of the scenario. Sherlock brings the economy-sized bottle of aloe gel to John in the kitchen, where he is rinsing the tea cups. John doesn’t look up as Sherlock sets it on the counter.

“Wait for me in your room.”

Sherlock goes back into his bedroom, removes his knife from its sheath, and sections the rope into neat lengths while John checks the door is locked and shuts off the flat’s lights, the mundane, routine tasks he completes every night. Then Sherlock pulls the top sheet and duvet back from his bed, and tosses the riding crop and the rope on the sheet, keeping the knife close at hand in case John should need to cut the ropes quickly. He considers removing his clothes, but John will tell him do that. The thought makes him quiver.

John crosses the threshold and shuts the door behind him. “Hand me your belt,” he says without preamble.

Sherlock doesn’t move. John’s looking up at him yet somehow staring him down, and for a moment he remembers that John is _not_ small, _not_ wrong, and most certainly _not dull_. In fact, it’s quite fascinating that John remains in the same quiet jeans and shirt and jumper and yet become so completely different. Quicksilver flashes illuminate Sherlock’s nipples, make his cock throb with blood. “Why?”

John just looks at him. Silence stretches, heats, quivers with an unbearable sensitivity, much like Sherlock’s skin.

“The crop is on the bed.” Along with the rope. It’s cotton, not hemp. Clothesline. Hardly strong, but John will know how to tie knots.

It’s already too much. He needs this and fears it, how much John can be for him.

_Delete._

John says nothing. He stands in front of Sherlock with his hand extended, palm up, waiting. Ever so slowly his the lines and angles of his face set an ominous wash that makes Sherlock’s pulse kick hard. John doesn’t speak — when he’s like this he doesn’t need to — but somehow words hover in the air between them.

_Take off your belt and hand it to me._

He feels like a greyhound to John’s bulldog, looming over John yet somehow completely at his command. He unfastens his belt, withdraws it from the wool loops. The sound is nearly inaudible and unbearably erotic for its quiet menace.

John studies the room, Sherlock’s body, assessing, quiet. “Take off your shirt and lean over the bureau.”

Sherlock complies, using his elbows to shove aside debris on his bureau. He watches his face in the mirror as the first stroke, backhand, flicking, lands with very little impact at all. John collects the leather, lets it run through his palm, then does it again. Again.

The smacks barely register. “Really, John. I can take more.”

John ignores him. Sherlock waits while he experiments with angles and techniques; as John finds his way heat grows in Sherlock’s arse. Finally John sets his feet. The leather of Sherlock’s belt slips through his fingers, and this time he flicks the tongue of the belt at Sherlock’s arse with sharper vigor.

Breath halts in Sherlock’s throat, then scours out on a low closed-mouth moan.

Thwack.  
Thwack.  
Thwack.

He automatically counts the methodical strokes — _eleven…twelve…thirteen_ — but it requires more concentration than it should. He shifts, circles his hips in the air, lets his head drop between his shoulders. He can’t watch his own face anymore, so he watches John’s, the belt, anything but the dazed look on his face. Despite his swimming vision in the mirror he sees his belt whisk through the air a split second — _seventeen_ — before the impact sends fire up and down his nerves.

Thwack.  
Thwack.  
 _Thwack._

After twenty John steps close and cups Sherlock’s left buttock. He squeezes, massages, watches Sherlock hiss his breath through his teeth.

“Hmm.” Still standing close enough for Sherlock to feel the heat of his body radiating through clothes, he says, “Let’s have a look. Trousers and pants down.”

Sherlock’s body responds slowly, muscles clenching in pain as he straightens, unzips, unbuttons, lets fabric drop to his ankles. He’s erect, retracted and glistening, his cock pulsing with his heartbeat. John still wears his jeans and button down shirt.

John taps the bureau. “Over you go,” he says, then studies Sherlock’s heated arse, trails his fingers down the curve of each buttock in turn. Abused, alert nerves spangle in response, sending sparks to Sherlock’s cock. “Nice. We’re getting there.”

John’s hand slips between Sherlock’s buttocks to cup his balls. Sherlock tries to widen his stance but can’t, with his pants and trousers hobbling his ankles. He groans instead, and John laughs.

“We’re definitely getting there. Let’s go again. This time, count them for me,” he says, then waits.

“Yes, sir.”

John shakes his head. “I like the way you say my name,” he murmurs. “Use that.”

Using his name, not the more traditional _sir_ or the more formal _Captain Watson_ , only highlights the unbearable intimacy of the experience. John. _John_.

“Yes, John.”

The leather lands hot and sharp. In contrast, Sherlock’s voice is low and thick when he says, “One.”

Twenty-four additional blows land, and he internalizes the principles involved. Human skin is exquisitely sensitive, friction a scientific principle. John need not be hard, rough, or vicious, merely patient and steady, John Watson’s defining, dangerous characteristics. Swaying with the inevitable itching impact that blooms hot an instant later, Sherlock fights himself, his response to the pain, the undeniable pleasure. His cock is a swollen rod hanging into the air in front of the bureau.

John stops again, handles Sherlock’s arse with a clinical detachment that’s hot as hell under the circumstances. Sherlock can’t stop his moan, or the way he flinches away from John’s palm only to arch back into it the next moment.

“Right,” John says. “On the bed.”

He doesn’t help Sherlock free himself from his trousers, or make his way to the bed. Sherlock stretches out, spreads his hands and feet for the corners. It’s a relief to abandon the need to keep himself upright and in position. He knows it won’t be a relief for long.

John kneels beside him — _John on his knees on a gurney shouting orders his hands in a soldier’s chest_   — “I don’t like to tie you down,” he murmurs into his ear as he does exactly that, bindings swiftly and tightly knotted, as one would expect from John. “But I won’t take chances with those gorgeous fingers.”

Sherlock writhes. He doesn’t like being tied down, either, but he understands why it’s necessary. His control is slipping, the impulse to reach back and soothe sensitive skin is almost impossible to overcome, and John’s not yet used the crop. He doesn’t relish breaking a finger and losing the violin for any length of time.

“What’s your safeword?”

“Safeword,” Sherlock murmurs, but he’s just repeating what he’s heard.

“I expect you to use it if any part of this becomes intolerable. Not just your arse. Which will be plenty uncomfortable.” John pinches a welt, then says, “Are you in there? Repeat that back to me.”

Sherlock surfaces enough to answer. “I’m to safeword if the pain is too much, or if I cannot bear tied down any longer.”

“Good man,” John says.

Then _goodpatientdoctor_ disappears again. There is no warning before the first hit lands. John controls the crop with firm flicks of his wrist, as it’s meant to be controlled. Irene’s theatrics with the swinging strokes would, if not buffered by Sherlock's suit jacket and shirt, have bitten through skin into muscle. John’s twitches of the crop land brisk and firm, but very, very precisely. The strikes never land above the swell of his buttocks or below mid-thigh. John’s avoiding Sherlock’s spine, the small of his back, tendons and ligaments running through the backs of his knees.

His arse, however, transitions from warm to hot to stinging torment, a contrapuntal of pain at odds with and yet a feedback loop to the pleasure throbbing in his cock. John drops the crop across Sherlock's back, opens the top drawer of the nightstand, and kneels on the bed again. Sherlock’s too dazed, adrift on a sea of sensation, to think through what John’s doing, but it comes as no surprise when John’s lubed finger slides between his buttocks. The tip of his finger strokes Sherlock’s anus until he writhes restlessly. The feel of cool slick against his thrumming arse makes him moan.

When John’s finger slides inside, the sense of being breached, opened, makes him _groan_. A hand rests on his throbbing arse, thumb teasing the welts as two fingers turns to three. Sherlock’s unashamedly grinding against the bed before John withdraws his fingers and replaces them with a vibrator. It slides deeper than John’s fingers can, but he doesn’t turn it on.

“God, John,” Sherlock groans.

“Don’t come. Tell me if you get close.”

During the next series of flicking impacts from the crop pain and pleasure fight for control of Sherlock’s nerves. Then John reaches for the vibrator’s base and turns it on, and the pleasure wins. Sherlock can’t control himself anymore, rutting against the bed, seeking any contact that will crystallize the pleasure enough for him to come.

John chuckles. “Not yet,” he says, and works a pillow under Sherlock’s hips. It’s too soft, too giving for the friction Sherlock to get off, and the pleasure recedes back into the pain. The position better exposes the truly sensitive flesh where arse meets thigh. John’s strikes come more slowly now. Sherlock’s in a state of such raw awareness that John doesn’t have to hit him hard to keep him floating between agony and ecstasy. He’s desperate to come, writhing against the pillow, fucking it, but when the pleasure nears peak, John taps him with the crop and the pain takes over.

Language turns to white noise in Sherlock’s head. He’s speaking in groans and rumbles and fragments of sound, and he doesn’t know what he’s saying. It could be anything. _No. Yes. More. Stop. Please don’t hurt me. Please don’t stop hurting me. Please._

John unties the ropes and shifts Sherlock on his back. Sherlock flops over, arms over his head, and sucks in air when his arse meets the mattress. He spreads his legs and writhes. John’s fingers trail down his temple, where his hair clings to his skin, over his lips, along his throat, arched and exposed, utterly vulnerable. When the movement stops Sherlock opens his eyes to find John straddling him. He lifts his fingers to his mouth and licks Sherlock’s sweat from the tips.

“You are…” He licks the end of his ring finger, then finishes with, “wrecked.” He reaches for Sherlock’s wrists and presses them into the mattress for emphasis. “Stay like that.”

Sherlock undulates against John’s grip for the sole pleasure of moving. His left hand drifts into his curls, and his right slides through John’s damp hair.

“Or like that,” John says.  

The rough, amused texture of his voice grounds Sherlock. _John._ So real. Even in Sherlock’s broken mind, John is there, calm and real. He presses a kiss into Sherlock’s wrist. Sherlock feels his tendons and ligaments quivering against John’s mouth. This is what John does to him. John takes him apart and holds him together. John could keep him in this in between state, strung between pleasure and pain, between need and release, between time and eternity, for forever.

Sherlock finds he wouldn’t mind, because… _John_.

The man who is the entirety of Sherlock’s world slides down his body and eases the vibrator out. His motivation becomes clear when he shoulders between Sherlock’s thighs. Sherlock’s fingers tighten in both his hair and John’s as John’s lips close around the tip of Sherlock’s cock. His fingers, more _thickroughhuman_ than the vibrator, drive into his anus. John mouths and sucks and licks as he twists his fingers; when Sherlock’s groans take on a crisis element he lets Sherlock’s cock slap wetly against his belly and shifts up to press his mouth to Sherlock’s. Back and forth he moves, mouth, cock, mouth, cock, the only constant his fingers working, twisting, stroking, and the throbbing pleasure/pain.  

He braces himself on one elbow and surveys Sherlock’s damp, flushed body. “I could leave you like this,” he says. “I could fuck you, come inside you, then leave you like this while I sleep. Think you could handle that, lying still, your prick aching, the smell of me seeping out of you?”

The image explodes in Sherlock’s heated, simmering brain. He groans. John’s mouth is so filthy when he’s crossed that invisible line that separates _goodpatientdoctor_ from the man with three fingers palm deep in Sherlock’s arse.

John watches him fuck the air. “I’d put the vibrator back in, tie your hands over your head. Just to make it interesting.”

It’s a relief to let go, to abandon everything. “No. I can’t…no. Please, John. Please.”

“Best not,” John says consideringly. “You’d rut against anything. The wall. The bed. Me. I don’t get enough sleep as it is.” He sets his mouth against Sherlock’s frenulum, breathing until Sherlock rocks his hips, undulating towards John like water seeking a place to gather itself, a container, a shallow place in the rocks, cupped palms.

“Please,” he whispers. “Please.”

John kneels between his thighs, then hooks his arms behind Sherlock’s knees to open him. The movement makes Sherlock cry out, but then John pushes inside. The stretch from hard, blood-hot flesh magnifies everything, pain, pleasure, the hot, sharp ache in his chest. John curls his hands around Sherlock’s thighs and fucks him slow, deep, relentless.

John doesn’t warn him when he decides to hurl Sherlock into the fire. He just doesn’t stop. He slicks his hand and loosely fists it around Sherlock’s cock, and lets the movements of his hips drive Sherlock's cock through his fist. Sherlock’s past awareness, one long groan scouring his throat. The sensation of John’s hips thudding against his abraded arse pushes heat into the base of his cock, then up, up, up until he simply cannot stop. Dimly he remembers he’s supposed to tell John when he gets close, but the change in the tenor of his gasps will have to do the job because he’s lost the capacity for language. Surely John knows. John’s watching him as intently as he ever has, and for a moment everything is fine.

Sherlock folds into blackness. He’s dimly aware when John gives a deep groan and shoves forward, his release pulsing deep inside Sherlock. Eventually John tugs free of Sherlock’s death grip in his hair, levers off the bed, curses as he stumbles into the bureau, then totters off into the kitchen. He returns with a basin and a cloth, which he sets on the nightstand. Firm, gentle fingers clasp Sherlock’s left wrist, then the right, turning to examine the skin. A soft hum of satisfaction, then a cloth sloshes in water. A cascade of droplets as it’s wrung out, then a cool damp flannel trails down Sherlock’s temple.

Sherlock tips his head into the touches. John pays special attention to his cheekbones, his throat, his lips. Desperately thirsty, Sherlock licks moisture from the cloth.

“I’ll get you something to drink in a minute.”

The touches ease lower, to his chest and abdomen, cleaning him. The flannel’s rinsed, wrung out again. Goosebumps rush over his skin, and Sherlock curls up on his side.

“Budge over,” John’s rough voice says. “And flatten out a bit.”

With a few gentle nudges from John, Sherlock rolls mostly to his stomach and lays his cheek on his folded arms. John stretches out next to him, reassuringly warm at Sherlock’s side as he wipes the cloth over his shoulders and back. The thorough, meditative motions ease him back into the earth’s atmosphere, but even the antibiotic cream on the rawest spots feels far away, like they’re happening to someone else. When John smooths a palmful of icy aloe gel over his scarlet bum, Sherlock crashes back into his body and makes a chest-deep noise.

“Sorry,” John says. “I put it in the freezer to chill it a bit.”

The cold glop coats his raw skin and some of the throbbing subsides. Some of it. What’s left of Sherlock's mind assures him he won’t sit easy for days.

John doesn’t say anything else. He leaves briefly to rinse out the bowl, and when he comes back, he offers Sherlock a glass of water. Sherlock manages to brace himself on one quivering arm to swallow the contents of the glass. Then he flops down again. John lies down on his side next to Sherlock. He still doesn’t say anything, just tucks Sherlock’s hair behind his ear, strokes his eyebrow, then his cheekbone, then his jaw. They’re soothing little touches, undemanding.

Affectionate.

Drifting on a heady wave of endorphins and oxytocin, he opens his eyes and stares into John’s.

 _\-- Endorphins, dopamine, serotonin, epinephrine, _the biochemical cascade of their connection_. Pleasure. Pain. Clarity -- _  
  
_What do you want? I’ll do anything, tell you anything. I’ll tell you about the flats. The things you don’t know. I’ll tell you about school, what they did. How they toyed with me, again and again. I’ll tell you how Mycroft didn’t stop it, because I was weak. I knew what they were, and I got addicted. I’m yours. I thought you would be mine, but I’m yours._  
  
The thought snaps him back to full awareness. John’s gaze sharpens, but his touches never falter. His dark blue eyes are the last thing Sherlock sees before he drops into sleep.  
  
+  
  
The next day his cotton pants and wool trousers rasp against his abraded, swollen, throbbing skin. Standing is the only bearable position. Forward movement is no more than an awkward shuffle punctuated by clutching at backs of chairs, tables, doorframes. Sitting is out of the question. John watches him, highly amused but at half two takes matters into his own hands.

“You need a walk,” he says, and plucks Sherlock’s coat from the rack.

“I don’t want a walk.”

“You’re going to go for one anyway. Exercise will loosen up the muscles a bit.”

Sherlock scoffs.

“Shut up and put your coat on.”

He does. He winces at each stair, proceeds down the sidewalk at a hitching stagger, lurching from parking meter to light post. Hands clasped behind his back, John studies shop adverts and matches his pace and, for the most part, maintains his professional doctor’s face rather than rolling about on the pavement and laughing, which he clearly wants to do. Sherlock feels like a toddler being taken for an outing, but by the time they reach Regent’s Park he’s moving more easily.

“You’ve done that before.”

John tips his head in silent acknowledgement.

Sherlock is viscerally, horribly, irrationally jealous. It must sit better on his face than it did on John’s because John doesn’t seem to notice.

_Delete._

“Been on the receiving end?”

“Absolutely no interest,” John says. “It’s not really my thing.”

They pause at a bench near a picnic pavilion. John sits, stretches his arms along the back of the bench, and scans the park at Sherlock’s back. Sherlock does not sit; instead he stands to the right of John’s knees, hands clasped at his back, and stares at the opposite horizon. The threat is real, present, thrumming under everything they do.

“You were interested last night.” The whole night is colored by his own response, but the memory of John’s cock sliding into him, blood-hot and thick, of sweat dripping from John’s jaw to Sherlock’s lips, is clear and real.

“Because you fucking came apart at the seams.”

“You did that for me.”

“Yes.”

“Is there anything you won't do for me?”

“Yes,” John says without hesitating.

John has _killed_ for him. Sherlock’s grip on the finer nuances of morality is admittedly tenuous but what could _possibly_ be worse? “Name one.”

“I can’t,” John admits.

They walk home.  
   
  
Later that night, after John has gone to bed, Sherlock lies on the settee, a pillow under his arse, fingers tented under his nose. His mobile rests on his abdomen. It worked. His mind is crystal clear again, no longer remembering John on his knees, a gun to his nape. John is once again diverting and useful and a magnifying glass, sex and presence and _watching_ , focusing Sherlock on beating Moriarty.  
But first, there is something he must wrap up. It’s no wonder Irene Adler had so many secrets stored in her mobile. Compromising pictures of someone with HRH before her name were the tip of the iceberg. Her odd, mad combination of ruthless manipulativeness and emotional insecurity might be of value to someone he knows, someone with whom he wants to have in his debt again. He picks up his mobile.  
  
You might find her useful. SH

Continue. MH

Must I do all your work for you, Mycroft? Indebted to _you_ for her very life, she might be rather useful. To _you_. Not me. SH

He doesn't need her. He has John.

She did claim to know what people like. MH

Sherlock drops his mobile to his abdomen and resumes thinking. The next text arrives several hours later.

A car is waiting outside. Your flight leaves in two hours. MH

He texts John from the military base just before he boards a cargo plane.

Called away on business for Mycroft. SH

 

John’s texts are waiting when Sherlock lands in Karachi.

You’re not going without me. Where are you?

Rearranged my clinic schedule. Packing now. Tell me where you are.

I’m ready. Where are you?

For God’s sake, be careful. I’ll be here when you get back.

 

Of course he will.  
  
+  
  
In the hills outside Karachi, as is befitting a situation tainted by both Mycroft Holmes and Irene Adler, it's all quite ridiculously dramatic. She’s on her knees in the dirt. Surrounded by guns of every sort he’s handed a sword, of all things, and there’s a fair bit of shouting, and the whole scene’s lit by headlights from a jeep, and what on earth is the woman doing in a militant Islamic country in the first place? Her self-preservation instincts are better than this, and any assassin with a particle of sense wouldn’t bother with kidnapping and transport.  
  
He finds, as he hefts the sword, that he doesn’t care. She runs when he says run. Thank God. She’s capable of refusing out of sheer spite.  
  
Just before dawn a team of British commandos plucks them out of the hills like the hand of God. “Dinner?” she cooes when the helicopter lands in Mumbai.

He regards her for a moment. Like him, Irene Adler is very clever. Like him, she is a cracked mirror, damaged into brilliant beautiful shards. Like him, she is essentially alone in the world. But he cannot feel a moment’s remorse for his next words.

People who are brilliant, damaged, beautiful, and alone cannot afford to lose, and she lost.

“Mycroft will be in touch,” he says, and watches her illusions shatter.

He walks off the helicopter and across the tarmac to board his flight home, leaving her to negotiate with one of Mycroft’s least impressionable agents.  
  
+  
  
The plane’s quiet hum and dark interior feels like a cocoon, the perfect backdrop to think.  
  
It’s not the pain. It’s the byplay of dominance and submission. It’s an intense risk, intense vulnerability (to be avoided at all costs) and at the same time, it’s the ultimate in control, another shading, another facet of owning John. Because John will do whatever he wants.  
The plane has wifi. He sends a text.  
  
Do you ever wonder if there’s something wrong with us? SH  
  
All lives end. All hearts are broken. Caring is not an advantage, Sherlock. MH  
  
He tents his fingers under his nose, thinking of Irene’s face when she shattered, John’s face as he brushed Sherlock’s hair back from his temple. They experience something that eludes him.

_Delete._

John, who is his, watching. No appointment needed.

_John._

He cannot be weak. Cannot be vulnerable.

_Delete._

There is no limit to what John will do for him. None at all. If he deletes all of John, how much of Sherlock will be left?

_Delete._

He closes his eyes. _Delete, delete, delete_. Clarity becomes white light, so brilliant it outshines everything but the worthy opponent for the world’s only consulting detective. Smart. Clever, really. Mad. Unpredictable. Still at large.  
  
He texts Mycroft.  
  
Proceed. SH  
  
He won, John is waiting, watching, and the game is on.


End file.
